Collateral benefits from public and private conservation lands: a comparison of ecosystem service capacities

Abstract

SUMMARYProtected areas remain the most commonly used tool forin situconservation; however growth in the USA's system of public lands has stagnated while private land conservation continues to expand. Easements can provide a range of ecosystem services (ESs), but it is unknown whether conservation easements maintain ES capacities equivalent to public protected areas. Evaluation of the capacity of seven ESs on federal and state protected areas and conservation easements in the USA using spatially-explicit ES models and publicly available data indicated that ES capacities in easements were equal to or greater than capacities within state or federal protected areas for six of seven services and, when bundled together, conservation easements protected greater focal ES capacity than other conservation areas. Economic incentive programmes and regulatory mechanisms may be used to stimulate capacity improvements for surface water regulation, riparian filtration, erosion control, and carbon storage on conservation easements, and landscape-level conservation efforts should (1) continue to protect natural and uninhabited areas that provide ecosystem and biological diversity, (2) expand private conservation efforts close to human population centres, and (3) limit future development to areas with high regulating service capacity that can sustain new population growth.

Inequity in ecosystem service delivery: socioeconomic gaps in the public-private conservation network

“…A gap protection status of 2 denotes land protected from conversion, but with allowed uses or management practices that may "degrade the quality of existing natural communities, including suppression of natural disturbance" (USGS 2012). Villamagna et al (2015) provide a discussion of data sources and constraints, and the U.S. Geological Survey provides further detail on gap status codes (USGS; http://gapanalysis.usgs.gov/blog/iucn-definitions/).…”

“…The focal CAs for this analysis are those used by Villamagna et al (2015) to evaluate ES capacity within public and private CAs of Virginia and North Carolina. Conservation easement records and geographic boundaries were derived from the National Conservation Easement Database (NCED; http://nced.…”

“…ES convey critical life-sustaining and subsistence values to communities (Brown and Fagerholm 2015). Villamagna et al (2015) make the case that these CAs, both public and privately managed, provide collateral ecosystem benefits; however, the question remains of to whom these benefits are conveyed. Extending the practice of social-environmental justice to include ES delivery suggests that the benefits from healthy ecosystems be shared equally among people and places.…”

“…Thus, recent additions reflect presidential power and motivation rather than the bipartisan support in Congress otherwise needed to designate a new national park or wilderness area. Given the low potential of increased public land conservation in the eastern United States and recognition that private conservation easements (PCEs) have nearly equal capacity to provide collateral ecosystem benefits as PPAs (Villamagna et al 2015), a comparative analysis of potential benefit delivery between PPAs and PCEs is warranted.…”

“…To advance progress toward the inclusion of ES in the practice of social-environmental justice, our objectives were: (1) to develop a simple and repeatable GISbased technique for mapping the pathways of ES flows, (2) to delineate location-based benefit zones for PPAs and PCAs, and (3) to evaluate and compare the socioeconomic and demographic composition of potential beneficiaries within the benefit zones of federal and state PPAs to those of PCEs. Building on the work of Villamagna et al (2015), we focused on the states of Virginia and North Carolina, USA to demonstrate the method; however, the approach is applicable worldwide, where data are available. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol22/iss1/art36/ Our study will help draw attention to issues of socialenvironmental justice with respect to ES (Ernstson 2013, Lele 2013, Sikor 2013 and elucidate the value of PCEs as an ES conservation strategy.…”